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Review: Safire's 'Dictionary' adds definition to politi-speak

By Liam Julian, Special to the Times


In print: Sunday, June 15, 2008

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Elections are difficult for Floridians. No need to bring up 2000 when the Sunshine State's role in 2008 has already caused consternation from West Palm Beach to Walla Walla.

Thank goodness, then, for Safire's Political Dictionary, the fifth edition of which is now available for public consumption. With the fate of Florida's Democratic delegates decided (Howard Dean: "Cut with a sword each delegate into two pieces, and give each candidate half!"), Floridians have a useful manual with which to decipher the rest of the process.

This dictionary is no dry specimen, though. It's a really interesting read. Many have heard of the three-martini lunch, for example, but how many know the phrase was birthed as a symbol of tax unfairness, surfacing in a speech by Florida Gov. Reubin Askew in 1972? Speaking at the Democratic Convention in Miami Beach, Askew said of average Americans, "What can we expect them to think, when the business lunch of steak and martinis is tax-deductible, but the workingman's lunch of salami and cheese is not?"

George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, "picked up the 'martini lunch' and improved it: 'The rich businessman can deduct his three-martini lunch, but you can't take off the price of a baloney sandwich." Safire winds down the entry with a joke — "Recipe for a Johnson (or Nixon, Carter, or Bush 41) cocktail: economy on the rocks" — and concludes, "For the metaphoric use of delicatessen meats, see BALONEY and SALAMI TACTICS."

What readers of Safire's Political Dictionary will learn is what readers of his weekly "On Language" pieces already know: Safire loves to play with words. That's why the former Nixon-Agnew speechwriter (Spiro Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" was Safire's) and longtime columnist is such a joy to read, whether one is a knee-jerk liberal or throws in his lot with the dinosaur wing.

Liam Julian is a St. Petersburg native and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.